OK...it is obvious there is no reasoning with a jaded person like you, and jousting with the uninformed is no fun...as Ron White stated..."You can't fix stupid"...
You apparently were uninformed about the fact that all those incidents I mentioned were real. I'm not uninformed; you are, and probably as much by design as anything else. You see/hear/speak no evil about cops because...
You see I am a retired police officer, decorated, with honors, with 21 proud years of service to my community...
I knew it was something like that, but I was guessing you were a cop's wide, because of your emotional, irrational rah-rah, hear-no-evil, acknowledge no facts defense of the thin blue line through thick or thin. But that you were an actual cop makes sense, too. You're defending your brothers regardless of any facts, and though I could bury you in incidents that show that cops have changed and are no longer defensible, it wouldn't matter; you won't listen to the facts no matter what.
and I was offended by your signature lines,
All this offense on this forum lately! It's at an all-time high, it seems. That's why I thought you were a cop's wife, the way you're taking it.
You remind me of a woman on a trucking forum where we were discussing training and training companies. Her husband worked for Werner, where you can become a road trainer, training other rookies when you have only 6 months of experience in a big truck, yourself--iow, a rookie training a rookie! Some of us objected to that setup, and this woman was mega-offended. We has insulted her husband, in her mind. I pointed out that it was nothing against her husband personally, but no one with only 6 months of experience in a big truck is qualified to train others, even if he's the best 6-month-tenured driver on the face of the earth. That didn't mollify her. I had insulted her man and she was offended, and she unsubscribed in a huff, emotional and offended, not listening to reason, which, apart from the unsubscribing, is what you appear to be doing. I've attacked you and your fellow officers on that thin blue line! How offensive!
when you have no idea what you are talking about.
It's not a matter of knowing what I'm talking about. I've cited but a few examples (of multiple thousands) that show that the nature of cops has changed, examples you
appear to have been unaware were factual. Those examples being what they are, my judgment is what it is. So it's not an issue of being uninformed.
I've been critical of cops in numerous threads on here, and passed up opportunities to criticize them on many occasions on which I've read of police abuse and thought maybe I'd post it here but decided not to. If you'd care to do a search for them and point out in them where I'm uninformed, that'd be great. I'd love to read your opinion on them, and maybe you'd eventually read enough to make you wonder if maybe I'm right, that cops
have changed (though I doubt it, because I suspect your situation makes you biased to the point that cops could be clubbing people at random in front of you for no legit reason, and you'd still rationalize it; that's a recognized phenomenon among cops).
the bottom line is...if you don't have anything good to say about someone, don't say anything at all..
That's an asinine statement.
Alright, as a final parting shot, lets get this straight, according to you...All cops are bad, so we should get rid of them...
A bit of a stretch, but in general, cops who won't adhere to standards or the Bill of Rights must go, yes...
All military is bad, so we should get rid of them...
Haven't said that, but being that the military has no legit role inside the states unless we're under attack, it's a wholly separate issue.
Now you have gotten rid of all of your protection and the BAD guy is coming for you...Whatcha gonna do...boy, whatcha gonna do...
First, I don't rely on cops for protection. Courts have ruled cops have no such duty. Though they sometimes protect, it's as much an accident as anything else when it happens.
Cops are usually called after something happens, to pick up the pieces. Looking around, I don't see a cop anywhere. If some crazy man is about to bash through my window with a hammer and attack me, no cop will stop him. It's up to me, like it is well over 99% of the time.
If that hammer-wielding crazy man does attack and I choose to call the police, I'll be happy if they arrive in time to arrest him, happier yet if I'm unhurt. But as a saying goes, "There's no human tragedy so awful that it can't be made worse by the presence of a policeman." Lots and lots of people call cops for help and end up getting helped to death, or raped by a cop, as in a case that made the news recently. Or protected and served to death, like many survivors of Katrina. So if I was unhurt, maybe I wouldn't call at all.
It wasn't always like this, but lately, calling the cops is frequently an example of the cure being worse than the disease.
As for what to do once we get rid of the bad apples, that's unfortunately a drawn-out process, so it's not like all the bad cops are going to disappear overnight. But we'd want to replace them in whatever number we in society desired. But it would give us a chance to revamp the hiring and training process to stop recruiting psychopaths and training to produce psychopaths, and instead inculcate in the cadets a proper respect for their masters--civilians--and especially the Bill of Rights.
Your thinking has no rational...lets see a few planes have crashed...get rid of the planes, a lot of cars have crashed, killing hundreds of thousands per year...get rid of the cars...
Though the analogy between human and inanimate object is flawed, the principle is similar--get roid (a typo, but a convenient one) of the defective ones, yes. But in the case of cops, society has of late intentionally recruited defective cops and trained to ingrain the defect. There's the first fix right there.
see where this is going...I both apologize, and regret getting into a banter with such an uninformed person...
I have demonstrated myself to be quite informed on the matter, while you are reacting out of emotion and offense. If you put those aside, we can approach the matter rationally. If I have time, I hope I can find the blog I sometimes read that's written by a retired Chicago cop who sometimes writes about the same things I do--how cops have changed from his day, and not for the better. He has a photo of himself in his uniform back when he was a cop, and a photo of a paramilitary thug in combat gear who calls himself a cop, and feels disgust.
You want to be a soldier, go to the marine recruiting office. You want to help people, put down the roids and the attitude and the taser and be an honorable, respectable PEACE OFFICER, not a g.d. LEO soldier-wannabe who finds the streets of America safer to practice his psychopathy than Afghanistan.
As a cop said in response to a reporter:
Reporter: "Officer, do you expect violence here today?"
Cop: "I certainly hope so."
2012: Ron Paul or not at all.
The lesser of two evils is still evil.